Tag Archives: Game

Crowdsource world saving to everyone, through online games!

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Jane McGonigal, director of Games Research & Development at the Institute for the Future, makes a passionate case for online games in which players, by playing, help in saving the world (‘Gamers are a human resource that we can use to do real-world work, that games are a powerful platform for change.‘) At the end of her TED talk, she mention her last effort: Evoke, a crash course in changing the world. (‘This is a game done with the World Bank Institute. If you complete the game you will be certified by the World Bank Institute., as a Social Innovator, class of 2010.‘). Whatever it means, you have to admit that it is clever giving the possibily of calling yourself “World Bank Institute Certified Social Innovator”!

EVOKE trailer (a new online game) from Alchemy on Vimeo.

Medieval christian politician and failed censorship

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UPDATE: the medieve tried to censor Luca Volonte’ in his domain lucavolonte.eu, but Luca Volonte’ is stronger than censorship and reappeared at luca-volonte.com. Once more, let us yell all together: Liberte’, Egalite’, Volonte’.
Luca Volonte’, a narrow minded Italian politician, leader of the Christian Democratic Party, tried to censor the videogame “Operation: Pedopriest” by MolleIndustria. Paradoxically the christians politicians are exploiting a law against pedophilia to ban a satirical game that point the finger to child abuses committed within the clergy. I understand Italy is the last stronghold of the medieval church but they are really passing the mark. Anyway the videogame is now available on many sites and even on Luca Volonte’ site. Liberte’, Egalite’, Volonte’.

An online game is like a country and citizens asks for democracy

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Interesting article on nytimes. I particularly liked this part:

“Perception is reality, and if a substantial part of our community feels like we are biased, whether it is true or not, it is true to them,” Hilmar Petursson, CCP’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview. “Eve Online is not a computer game. It is an emerging nation, and we have to address it like a nation being accused of corruption.”

Also relevant this washingtonpost article Does Virtual Reality Need a Sheriff? Reach of Law Enforcement Is Tested When Online Fantasy Games Turn Sordid:

Rosedale said he hopes participants in Second Life eventually develop their own virtual legal code and justice system. “In the ideal case, the people who are in Second Life should think of themselves as citizens of this new place and not citizens of their countries,” he said.

Note that he is speaking about citizens developing legal code and not world-creators embedding a legal code into the programming code. Interesting times …

Below the beginning of the article from nytimes
Continue reading →

The attention economy as MMORPG

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I don’t like too much the concept “Attention Economy”. I prefer focus my attention on grasping concepts such as Reputation Economy and Gift Economy. Nevertheless I loved the following definition from “The Real Nature of the Emerging Attention Economy” 2006 Etech by Michael H. Goldhaber (slides in PDF).

An Economy, Most Generally…..
• is a massively multiplayer
• SINGLE-LEVEL game
• that involves some kind of passing of
• scarce entities
• between players
• so as to knit all players intricately together

So, don’t you think it is time we all level up together? Maybe not just one but two or three levels?

SecondLife-like from Sony but installed by default on every PS3

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I know this blog seems to be turning just into a list of videos and what is even more depressing (for me) is that I was nowhere near to foresee that videos would have been so powerful and spreading over the Web. Anyway, this is too cool not to embed here (note I don’t speak about “link to” but “embed into”). Read Sony Announces Ground-Breaking, 3D Online-User Community for PS3 Called “Home” or watch the video.
It seems a lot like SecondLife (I just saw SecondLife once while at a BarCamp in Turin) but the strong point for Sony is that it is installed by default in every PS3 box so this can be huge!